Lamentation

Friday, Nov. 04, 2016

Dear God,

Things look pretty grim right now. As I was writing this column I learned that a friend who had been battling cancer died. Another friend’s father is in the hospital with heart trouble. Another’s house flooded. My mom’s beloved cat, which was only 4 years old, had to be put down because of kidney problems. Not too far from where I live, a 14-year-old allegedly shot a 16-year-old. The homeless in the Salt Lake area could be in danger of freezing to death during the coming long, cold winter, according to a headline in one of the local major newspapers. Tuesday’s presidential election is so contentious that no matter who wins, the acrimony will continue long after all the votes are counted. 

The world at large isn’t faring any better, what with poverty, war, pestilence, starvation, political corruption, plunder of the environment, and natural disasters. Last week you even allowed an earthquake to destroy a basilica where for centuries people have worshiped you and paid tribute to two of your best-known saints, Benedict and Scholastica. 

This week we celebrated the Feast of All Saints, a diverse lot of men, women and children, many of whom went to gruesome deaths while singing your praises. I would like to know what gave them such happiness, because although I have all necessary earthly comforts, when I look out all I see is doom and despair.

A couple of weeks ago I sought solace at the Spiral Jetty, a desolate place about 15 miles down a gravel road west of the Golden Spike National Site Visitor Center, which itself is 20 miles from the town of Corinne.

The Spiral Jetty, a 1,500-foot formation of hundreds of basalt rocks, was created by Robert Smithson on the shore of the Great Salt Lake. When the water level is high, the artwork is submerged. In drought situations, like today, visitors can walk through the jetty and ponder questions such as why someone would create a piece of art that can be viewed only by the comparatively few people who are willing to travel to see it, and then only when environmental conditions permit.

Standing on the salt-encrusted sand at the jetty, with the barren lakeshore stretching to the horizon, such questions come easily, as does the knowledge that someday each of us will fade away, taking with us not only our mortal bodies but also soon enough any trace we left on this earth, just as with time water and wind will erode the rocks of the Spiral Jetty. Eons from now only the earth will remain, and eventually not even that.

So it is astonishing that in Norcia, where the earthquake destroyed the Basilica of St. Benedict, a statue of the saint in the town square remains unscathed. Intact too is his legacy, through the members of the order he founded, who have continued since the sixth century to follow his rule through work and prayer so “that in all things God may be glorified.”  

Perhaps this is why saints are joyous: They know that the death and destruction that have ruled this world since Adam and Eve will pass away, while they are headed to an incorrupt life that you have prepared for them. Who would not be ecstatic when on their way to reign with Christ for ever and ever?

The question this leads me to, then, is how to live in a way that leads me to view all this as vanity of vanities, and so that I will not fear to be judged by my deeds that are written on the scrolls that shall be opened by the one who sits on the large white throne.